1. Field
Embodiments of the invention relate to user interface options of a data lineage tool.
2. Description of the Related Art
Data lineage tools allow business and technical users to view the history of a discrete object (e.g., a object) from its introduction into, for example, a corporate data infrastructure (e.g., a database) to its current state. The history of an object may be described as information on processes that handled the object and what the processes did (e.g., a printing process printed the object). A data lineage tool may be used to answer the questions of “Where did this data come from?”, “Where does this data go?” and “What business rules touch or have touched this data?” A data lineage tool accomplishes this by tracking the object through all the processes that touched (i.e., impacted or affected) that object. The output of a data lineage tool may be referred to as a data lineage view. A data lineage view includes one or more data lineage paths, and each data lineage path describes how an object was affected by processes. For example, a data lineage view may show that an object was initially stored in Database A, then was put into file B, then aggregated with information from Databases E and F, then was sent to reports Y and Z. FIG. 1 illustrates a portion of a prior art data lineage system. In this example, a data lineage tool performed a data lineage analysis on an orders.txt object 110. In FIG. 1, the data lineage from an orders.txt object to an OrderFact object and an OrderRejects.txt object is illustrated. A data lineage path may be described as a path from a first object (e.g., orders.txt) to a second object (e.g., OrderFact) that describes a lineage of the first object. A first object from which the data lineage paths start may be referred to as a parent or root and is an ancestor of all other objects in the data lineage path. The object at the end of a data lineage path is a descendent of all other objects in the data lineage path. The remaining objects (also referred to as intermediate objects) in the data lineage path are ancestors of one or more objects and descendants of one or more objects in the data lineage path.
Conventional data lineage tools are useful, but have limitations. For example, conventional data lineage tools may only show a small portion of an object's lineage, may have limited context for objects that are in an ancestry data lineage path (i.e., descendants and ancestors), and may not show how the object is affected when the object moves through the system (e.g., whether the object has been truncated, aggregated, etc.).
Thus, there is a need in the art for improved usability of a data lineage tool.